comic strips

Halftone 2 is a nice iPad app for creating simple comic strips based on your pictures. To get started with Halftone 2 you choose a layout for your comic then import pictures from your iPad’s camera roll. You can add borders and visual effects to each of your imported pictures. After arranging your pictures you can add text in a variety of comic styles. Completed projects can be shared in a variety of ways including email, Dropbox, Twitter, and saving to camera roll. Watch the short video below to learn more about Halftone 2.

Halftone 2 could be a good iPad for students to use because it does not require students to create accounts in order to create comics.

Update: As of March 2014 this app seems to have disappeared from the App Store.

Story Me is a free iPad app for turning your pictures into comic strips. Story Me provides more than a dozen layout options to which you can add pictures from your iPad’s camera roll and or from your Facebook account. After importing pictures into a template you can apply cartoon effects to the pictures. To complete the creation process just tap on your imported pictures to add speech bubbles and captions. Your completed Story Me comics can be saved to your iPad’s camera roll, emailed, printed, or shared on Twitter and Facebook. You do not need to create an account on Story Me in order to use it.

Story Me is easy to use and because it doesn’t require users to create an account it is a good choice for elementary school use. Pictures that students have taken with their iPads or found online can be good writing prompts. Importing those pictures into Story Me to create a comic strip could be a good way to get students interested in a creative writing assignment.

Strip Designer is a great comic strip creation tool to add to your students’ iPads. Priced at $2.99 USD it is $2 less than Comic Life and is just as good. Strip Designer provides dozens of comic strip layouts from simple one frame comics to one page layouts in a variety of configurations to multiple page layouts there is probably a layout that works for all students. And if not, your students can create their own custom comic strip layouts in Strip Designer.

Strip Designer allows students to create comics from scratch by drawing pictures, taking pictures, or importing pictures. Students can import pictures from a variety of places including Facebook, Dropbox, and the camera roll on their iPads. Each frame in your students’ comic strips is created individually and is not tied to an overall theme. This means that one frame in their comic strips could be based on a photo and the next frame could be based on a drawing. The borders and shading effects for each frame can be individually adjusted too. To help students really tell stories through comics, Strip Designer offers a slew of text editing tools, digital stickers, and drawing tools.

Completed Strip Designer comic strips can be shared through a variety of channels including email, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. Completed comic strips can also be saved as PDFs to store on your students’ iPads or sent to a Dropbox account.